So I get home from the shore yesterday and my father calls me, saying that some lady from Utah called him and wanted to get in touch with me. He gave me the number and the readout on the caller ID. It was my ex mission president's wife! A little background-I returned from the field in 1969. My father's phone number has always been unlisted, as has mine. I have not heard from anyone on my mission until now. I have no idea how she found his name and number, or even knew that he was my father. It has been 39 years since I saw this woman! How do they do it? How do they find you? It beats all understanding and is truly a marvelous work and a wonder, sort of like my hair, what is left of it.
So I am in a quandry-do I call her back and open up all that old stuff? I probably will, just because my curiosity is nipping at me. Stay tuned-no film at 11, but should be interesting.
BTW, some of you know that I work at a famous east coast university and hospital, a bastion of free thought and alma mater to not a few agnostics. This morning I saw LDS missionaries for the first time here, sitting on a bench outside preaching to one of our psychiatric patients. this went on for over an hour. I felt sorry for the patient and the mishies. They all deserved better.....

_________________
The Devil in the White City

Hey Pale Ale, being contacted nearly 40 years after your mission is very interesting, especially since it's been almost that long since you were active. I'm in awe that they are able to track folks down in such devious and almost illegal ways.

Most of us can be found with a few clicks on Google or other sites and more information than we ever thought possible is available to any who wish to dig in. On occasion I google myself and folks I know, sort of like internet spying, or maybe just curiosity. I have one brother that is truely off the grid in that he doesn't have electricity other than a generator, is barely on any public records, etc. and has an unlisted number. He lives totally in the dark ages of the woods on Whidbey Island Washington. He likes it this way.

I googled his name and there was a notice from some Missionary Reunion site looking for him. He served his mission in 1978 and they'd lost touch. He's still very active and devout in the church so I'm sure they could have found him that way but I also wonder if some of those things are a ruse to get information on folks for other purposes.

I sent the link to my brother and he was actually sort of upset that there was any kind of info on the net about him whatsoever. I don't think he's done anything illegal or traceable, but even he can be found. I don't know if he contacted the missionary site or not. The point is, THEY have tentacles out there in a million ways, looking, searching, gleaning, sifting, and penetrating everything. No wonder the govt. likes to hire Mormons for the NSA and CIA and FBI and other nefarious spy organizations. The ways they justify it are equally appalling.

On Infymus's Mormon Curtain is this link that also has an article that discloses one of their many methods for extracting information on various people.

I'm not usually a conspiracy theorist but I have to think they have other motives than just trying to draw us back into the fold. SUrely they can't read such stuff as we post here or on Infymus's site that would lead them to believe they have a chance in hell of bringing us back. SO then WHY, Why do they want to track us? What value is there in hounding former members?

I've changed my name, moved, gotten married, all without disclosing such info to the church and they still sent missionaries to my door here in Vegas. I don't even have my mail from New Harmony forwarded to Vegas so it can't be through the post office. I felt a great tenderness for the missionaries because they're just little boys and naive and ill prepared for the big wide world, and surely have no ill intent toward me personally. I treated them well and fed them but it still seems very invasive, nearly criminal to have them hunting people down who by their Constitutional right to just leave should be left alone.


SURVEILLANCE (SCMC)
Total Articles: 7
The Strengthening Church Members Committee (SCMC) was formed by Ezra Taft Benson. It is a secret organization within the LDS Church whose sole purpose is to track down dissidents and keep records on them. It is also to keep track of anyone who speaks out against the Church. This topic includes all surveillance conducted by the Mormon Church.

_________________


Pissing in the Mormon Koolaide one post at a time. LIE PINOCCHIO!!! LIE!!!!

Hey;

I think it's so creepy that they hunt people down as they do. I don't even know what to say.
This isn't a hunting down story, but kind of the same. I visited Utah once to spend time with a guy I became friends with when he served here on his mission.
I remember wondering Temple Square one day on my own. There were sister missionaries all over the place. Believe me, they know how to attack better than any female lion for certain. And when they attacked, they took a big bite. I made the GRAVEST of errors in talking to them. It would be one thing if they were really trying to greet people, but they weren't. It's a greet, engage, drill, drill some more, and get a commitment. They asked me for all the members of my family and whether or not they'd want to hear the gospel, so forth and so forth. I submitted, and gave them my phone number. Boy that was a mistake.
They started calling my cell phone three days after I returned home. With barely a "hello Mike, how are you?" It was already into "So tell me about your mother and how you think the gospel will help her" and blah blah blah SICK.
They are very crafty, masters at what they do.

My recent revelation on "why" they are hell-bent on finding you:

A few weeks ago, my cousin calls me on the telephone and describes how he "needed" to know that I was "ok and doing well" (we have not had contact for over 15 years!). Apparently, his TBM Dad had a dream "vision" that he needed to contact me. Anyway, my cousin questions me for an hour about my life and shennigans. Finally, he asks for my brother's telephone number. My brother is a lot like your's Insanad --only he does not have a telephone.

My cousin actually put a $100 reward on the internet for information leading to the whereabouts of my brother!

About a half hour later, my uncle calls me and speaks to me for about 45 minutes. He ends the conversation by telling me that my dead mother appeared to him after her death and told him that she was doing well and not to worry (he wasn't very nice to my mother before she died). My uncle also told me, "You know, your Father appeared to your mother after he died and told her to pay her tithing."

The bottom-line:

TBMs have visions about the spirit world, hell, and divine orders. They contact you because they are inspired through dreams and visitations.

Pay Ale, Sister So&So probably had a vision and needed to contact you with a special message about your salvation.

Hello Torticollis5- I'm new here so hope you don't mind me calling you by your formal name...There is a chapter in the D & C that talks about Spurrious Revelation. I think that means false revelation but it seems that many people in the early church would sort of get these group infused series of revelations or visions.

Maybe it's like what I've seen some people who go to the temple do. They have a want or need and so they go to the temple and pray in the Celestial room or in their nightly prayers and after a while, they have invested so much thought into it that they seem to percieve that they've gotten an answer back that confirms their specific need or belief. I think I've done that sometimes too when I've prayed.

Some of the Mormons I know really truely believe that they're doing God's will by trying to bring someone back into the church. I think they don't see how arrogant or narrow minded they really are. They also get a lot of pressure at church meetings to try to bring people back in because the statistics for converts vs lifetime members are so complex. Perhaps they figure it's easier to befriend someone who allready has the background and family ties than to spend lots of time on a newly converted but inactive member who hasn't invested as much. I think it's really hard for those with lots of family in the church to really ever leave.

_________________
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Mother Teresa

Hi Rose,

I know, right? I always wondered "why" Mormons ALWAYS see spirits or have visions? My husband's aunt lived across from the Jordan temple. When it was being built, Aunt B would revel in how she could see spirits walking around the temple grounds -- just so delighted that the temple was being built!

Please... How do you see that from several hundreds of yards away? Probably, the "spirits" Valium talking.

http://www.sleeps.com/analysis.html

Hello Torticollis5, Visions and Dreams and even revelations seem like a very big white canvass and whomever is the one dreaming, having the vision, or promoting the revelation gets to paint whatever they want on the canvas. The viewers are left to just interpret the picture given them because first of all, they weren't there, and it wasn't their dream or vision or revelation. One could discredit the dreamer but it was their experience to be interpreted the way they choose to or are led to interpret, but to pick it apart seems irrelevant.

On the other hand, those that have whatever manifestation they do, real or imagined seem a bit untrustworthy in my book if they proclaim that we should follow their dream or vision or revelation. In the case of Joseph Smith, it seems his were very real to him but in studying his journals and the accounts of others, he revised his initial first vision so many times that even the first version doesn't have credibility. When he claims that God the Father spoke to HIM and told HIM not to join any other church, I believe he believed that. That was HIS vision.

The real challenge seems to come when we lose confidence in our own minds or reasoning and give our thoughts and wills over to others, who for whatever reason like the control over our minds and lives. Joseph Smith should have been more forthright in proclaiming his vision as just that, HIS. Getting everyone around him caught up in its various versions and then claiming that HE could now speak to and through GOD, while the people around him had to just sit and wait for HIM to dictate what THEY should do seems pretty idiotic, in retrospect. Yet I can look back at half a lifetime of doing just that and recognize myself in the people that believed and obeyed because someone they respected told them what to do based on THEIR dream or vision.

Dream interpretation seems like an unreliable science but the above link might offer some comfort, or maybe just be fun to play with. The man on the home page is very much like one I have seen in a few dreams but it might be inappropriate to discuss those kind of dreams here. He was always very good though.

_________________
Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Mother Teresa